Tiny Upholstered Bed for Two

This is part of our Tiny House, Tiny Bloggers series, in which we turn over Plaster & Disaster to some VERY tiny bloggers to tell their own story of transforming an ugly, old (doll)house into a fresh and modern (doll)home.  Follow it from the beginning here.

Disclaimer:  Inclusion on this blog is not an endorsement by Plaster & Disaster of the tiny blogger’s methods or design decisions.  Plaster & Disaster cannot be held responsible for your terrible decor choices after reading one of their tutorials.  All opinions are their own.

Hello from Tiny Blogland! It’s been quite awhile since we last stopped by to share a tiny house update — there are a few projects we’ve been meaning to get to, but we need a little help from Naomi and Sage and they keep claiming they’re “too busy with [their] jobs” and “working on [their] own homes.” Sure.

As you know, we’ve been slowly working our work through our living room makeover.

This house renovation is taking wayyyy longer than we expected, though. We’ve been at it for almost two years, which has definitely been a challenge because in the meantime we’ve been living without little things like a kitchen or a bathroom.

The worst part, though, has been our sleeping arrangements. It’s hard to bring your best self to creating your dream home when you wake up every morning in this master bedroom:

On the plus side we have two vintage typewriters so that’s pretty cool, but on the other hand everything else about this room is horrible.

The other day, we were scrolling through Pinterest when we came across this amazing bed:

(Sorry for the lack of photo credit, we couldn’t find the original source anywhere. Feel free to sue Sage and Naomi accordingly.)

We immediately knew we wanted a bed exactly like this, because nothing says legit master bedroom like a modern upholstered bed. When we pitched the idea to Naomi and Sage, they insisted on doing a tufted headboard — apparently they’ve been feeling really insecure about the fact that they claim to be real bloggers but don’t have a DIY tufted headboard tutorial on their site. Win-win!

For the frame of the bed, we needed fabric, a piece of craft plywood (from Michaels), and some beads about the same color as the fabric for the tufting. We also used some batting, small nails, staple gun, hammer, and needle and thread, but forgot to photograph them. Blogging is hard!

For the rest of the bed, we also needed some scrapwood for the mattress, various fabrics for the bedding, and two washers for the front legs.

First up, we decided on the dimensions of the bed. The best part of making your own bed is you can make it a perfect fit! We decided to make the base of the bed 7″ long and 8″ wide, which left us able to make a 5″ high headboard. Sage used her table saw to cut the base and headboard, which is much more efficient than when we try to saw things ourselves.

We knew that we needed to pre-drill holes in the headboard to make the tufting work, so next we mapped out the design of tufting on the back of the headboard. First we tried a diamond pattern:

But it felt too busy and like it didn’t quite go with the modern shape of the bed, so instead we decided to go with a simpler grid pattern. We marked the final holes using a red marker so as not to confuse our tiny little heads (and Naomi and Sage’s giant heads) with the prior pattern.

Then we used a small drill bit to drill holes through each red mark.

The other thing we knew we’d need to deal with was how to anchor the thread from the tufting. We started by making our own tiny nails — starting with a normal nail:

Then we shaved it down a little with metal shears (but it was too thick to cut all the way through):

Then we used pliers to snap it at the weakened point, to create this tiny nail:

We made two of these, and hammered them into the back of the headboard on either end. Our intention was to use these as anchors for the tufting thread.

Next up, we cut some batting for the front of the headboard.

Then we cut a piece of fabric to fit over the front and sides of the headboard.

We worked our way around the headboard, pulling the fabric tight and using the staple gun to secure the fabric to the back. For some reason we couldn’t get the staples to go all the way in, so we just hammered them down. Not pretty, but it works and we knew it would be covered eventually.

Next up, it was time to tuft! Using a needle and black thread, we started by tying the end of the thread to one of the nails.

Then we worked our way along the top row of holes, poking the needle through the back

Then pulling it out the front:

Threading a bead:

And then putting the needle back through the headboard close enough to go back through the same hole and pulling it tight.

Sometimes the beads turned to the side so the hole was facing out, so it required some finagling.

We worked our way down each row of tufting, using the nails on either end to secure the start and end of each run. When all three rows were done, we hammered the nails flat and dabbed some hot glue over each one to further secure the threads.

To cover the back, we used another panel of fabric to lay across the back and hot glued it in place. Unfortunately we did that before thinking about how to attach the headboard to the base, so we should have saved the back panel for last.

For the base of the bed, we didn’t use any batting, we just used the same fabric and stapled it in place.

To attach the headboard to the base, we hammered two nails through the back of the headboard into the base, holding the base in Sage’s vice clamp to keep it in place.

The headboard serves as the back legs of the bed, but we still needed front legs. We decided to use simple metal hex nuts that were the right height, and we spraypainted them ORB and then glued them in place.

To make the mattress, we used a scrap block of wood (we love a firm mattress!) that was slightly narrower and shorter than the base of the bed, and then wrapped it in layers of fabric to create the bedding.

It may not be comfortable, but it looks great and that’s what matters!

All that was left to put the mattress on the bed (which was so much easier than moving a mattress usually is with help from Naomi and Sage!). Tada!

We love our lace rug from our old house so we threw that down, even though we know it’s too tiny for the space.

What a relief to finally have a real bed. Just look at me enjoying it!

Now that we’ve taken this giant step in our bedroom, we can’t wait to keep making progress to turn this space into our little oasis!